


Least Resistance

by sunspeared



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 10:51:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8053510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunspeared/pseuds/sunspeared
Summary: After Corypheus's defeat, in their last days at Skyhold, Dorian and Bull find themselves at a crossroads.





	Least Resistance

**Author's Note:**

> Exists in the same continuity as my Adoribull MB fic from last year, but can be read independently of it. Shout-out to klickitats, for mercilessly beating this fic into shape, [Katie](http://serenity-fails.tumblr.com), for their unflagging support and their beautiful, tasseled art, [Jame](http://iambickilometer.tumblr.com/), for their arsepots, and my roommate, [die hella Rache](http://archiveofourown.org/users/maypop) for listening to me wail.

_9:38 Dragon_

_Dear boy,_

_I never thought you'd go through with your threat to become an archivist, but I hear you're elbow deep in Magister -----'s collection. Do think of old Mae when you nick the choicest volumes for my collection. I hear the estate has a pristine copy of the_ Encyclopédie Orlesienne _, which is easily worth a fortune to the right bidder. Don't fret about the sanctity of knowledge; the list of crimes she and her husband committed on Seheron in their day is as long as your arm, but she's still, somehow, received in polite society. Well—money is a sauce that covers a multitude of sins. You and I know that well enough._

_Your father stopped me in the hall after today's session of the Magisterium. I told him where he could put his concern for your well-being, and that such services would be available after Magister -----'s soiree, this evening. It was declasse of me, I know. You want as little contact as possible, and especially not through me, I know. But if he, or Aquinea, insist on approaching me—_

*

Their shared chambers faced to the south-east, and were the first to benefit from the weak mountain sun when it rose; when Dorian woke, he found himself directly in one of the more enterprising sunbeams, which meant that Bull was long gone. Their bed was cold, and the fire in the grate had gone out in the night. He rolled over to Bull's side of the bed to find his spectacles where he'd left them in the confusion of the night before. By some miracle, Bull's bulk had not crushed them, or else they hadn't used that particular corner.

He turned his attention to the half-charred wood in the grate. Only from a position of great safety would an altus waste mana on something as frivolous as a fire, when there were perfectly good servants who could waste their mana on his behalf—Southern mages, accustomed to living in danger at all times, did not mark such distinctions, much to Dorian's initial dismay. And what could be safer than this, the greatest enemy the world might face short of an archdemon a month in the ground at the Herald of Andraste's hand. Behind Skyhold's walls. Nude, but for Bull's atrocious pink damask velvet robe, tasseled where Bull's nipples would be, which he slid over his shoulders as he hopped down from their bed..

Outside of their room, it was quiet, but for the cawing of a pair of crows on a ledge outside their window, and the muffled, shuffling steps of the sleepy soldiers on patrol. Dorian felt—full. Heavy, with possibilities. He could cocoon himself in this hideous piece of upholstery fabric he consented to wear for love, and love alone, which smelled of Bull, and go directly back to sleep. He could pester Sera and Dagna in their underground love-nest. He could answer his correspondence, and what correspondence! Outside of Skyhold, no one knew he was the Inquisitor's least favorite. Well—Solas had been the least-favorite, but he was long gone, and good riddance. They knew only that he was part of the Inquisitor's circle of intimates, and had taken part in the assault on Adamant and the last fight against Corypheus. The finer details—that he had been embedded in a company of archers for Adamant as nothing more than a mobile barrier, and had hardly even seen Corypheus—were irrelevant.

After Redcliffe, it had swiftly become apparent that Inquisitor Lavellan, while she was grateful for his assistance in the future, was herself an accomplished battlemage, and had little use for Dorian as a fighter. It followed, then, he would never be one of the lucky few who accompanied her on her near-constant excursions into the farthest, most unwashed reaches of Thedas.

More slowly, it became apparent that Lavellan had little interest in him as a scholar. Her interests, much like Bull's and Sera's, were wholly of this realm, and her mark and her connection to the Fade were inconsequential except as tools to be used. She had even less interest in him as a human being, at which point he had fallen, quite naturally, under the Inquisition's diplomatic wing. It stung, to be sure—people were so rarely _indifferent_ to Dorian—but years of forging connections in the South at Ambassador Montilyet's side, playing the Inquisition's tame Tevinter, charming dowagers and financiers alike, had not gone to waste.

He lit the damned fire, and heated the stone under his feet for good measure, as he padded to his desk to pick over his letters. Halward Pavus's embarrassment of an heir was in demand. Academic publications wished to reprint his findings about the name of Corypheus, never mind that he had done, other, far more interesting work in his time with the Inquisition. Every magister who'd ever had so much as an idle thought about reform, it seemed, wanted him to be the handsome face of their cause. Invitations to parties that had already come and gone by the time he received them, tentative notes from old lovers—he shuffled them all aside. There was a note from Sera—

—which he tucked away into the volume where he kept three years' worth of her little messages. As her summons went, it was both cryptic and unignorable. Evening was the likeliest time, but if she had sent this message now, she would be in the Undercroft for days. Today, then. He would get the drop on her, for once.

Of the rest, there was only one invitation he intended to accept. At the bottom of the pile, in a beautiful, creamy envelope (he had never met anyone who loved paper so much as she did), written in an elegant hand Dorian knew full well was her secretary's and not her own: _Lady Magister Maevaris Tilani_.

He had read it several times: a formal offer to become her chief of staff at the Magisterium. From there, they would form a new political party, which had been nothing but a few paragraphs in his and Mae's letters for years, now. Speculations on the usefulness of his contacts in the South, how to sway popular opinion reformward without getting themselves assassinated in the process, which young hotheads were known to have radical inclinations, and how to poach them from their current posts and wrangle them into usefulness.

It had been theoretical, then, when they had not known if there would be a world left to change. It was not theoretical now. Dorian drew the robe tighter around his neck, and his foot hit one of Iron Bull's slippers, which never stayed in their appointed place next to the bed, where slippers had oughtto go. He slid it on, let it dangle from his toes.

A mere year and a half ago, there would have been no question of his accepting. At Mae's call, at the littlest crook of her finger, he would have packed his bags, bid Sera a fond farewell, and left Skyhold without remorse or hesitation. And there was stillno question of his accepting. But one evening, he had come to the Iron Bull's room and found a writing desk and bookshelf in the corner, a thick carpet on the floor, and an honest-to-goodness armoire waiting for him.

 _Might as well,_ Bull had said, with a shy smile. And that had been that. As simple as wanting. Dorian had never left. Would that the rest of their lives be so easy.

He couldn't keep this to himself any longer. Today was the day.

First thing in the morning, Bull went to the exercises on the green, and he did not eat breakfast beforehand, lest his stomach turn. Dorian stopped by the Great Hall to load up a plate with toast and sausages (the eggs would be cold by the time the exercises were finished, and Bull would not eat them), and headed out to the courtyard, to watch the very end of it.

The daily exercises were Cassandra's idea, to keep the whole of Skyhold fit, which was very noble in theory. In practice, a ragged group of fifteen or twenty people showed up three days a week. Krem, who, like any good Tevinter, did not believe in sleeves, was at the head of the group, touching his toes. Cassandra herself looked as fresh as a daisy, for all that the Inquisitor must have kept her up late _strategizing_. A pair of tiny, wizened Chantry sisters, who had confided to Dorian once, perhaps recognizing a kindred spirit, that they only turned up for the view, did whatever their bodies allowed them to; the rest of the attendees were the usual assortment of clerks, soldiers, scouts, and spies; and Bull, who was leaning very subtly on his right side, in hopes that no one would notice. They needed more of that elfroot salve, then.

He spotted Dorian, and smiled around a wince, and set himself back to holding onto his knees, in lieu of the full bend. Dorian sat on a low wall with his plate and watched all the passers-by trying not to gawk, and failing. There was Lady Josephine, walking very slowly on the battlements, feigning deep conversation with Leliana. A group of diplomats had very urgent business, no doubt, in the armory's general direction. A few, like Dorian, were openly watching, but none of them but Dorian were privileged, afterward, to tilt their heads upward and receive Iron Bull's good-morning kiss on the cheek.

"Breakfast is served," Dorian said, gesturing to the plate. Bull leaned against the wall and tucked into it—he ate very quickly, even after years of prosperity.

Dorian had long learned to mark the tiny shifts in Bull's attention when he picked up on something, or thought he'd picked up on something, because he was not infallible—he noticed. "Got something to tell me?" he said, taking a drink from the waterskin Krem had left him.

There was a nervous stirring in Dorian's gut as he watched Bull's throat bob, a foreboding he knew was justified. This was the end, or _an_ end, at least. He could not do it. Once he showed Bull the letter, he could never go back. One more hour—two more hours.

"You've had your morning exertions," Dorian said, then. "I haven't had mine. I thought you might like to help."

*

_9:41 Dragon_

_Mae—for Andraste's sake—you've sent me enough silk scarves to make a dancing girl pause. Silk! Have you ever experienced a winter? The monsoons in Rivain don't count. I may as well go out in the nude. Lady Montilyet—I'm sure you're tired of hearing of my newest benefactress, who could never hold her omnipresent candle to your beauty, wit, and killer instinct—though she may wear more gold than you on a daily basis—that is not a challenge, though you'll take it as one—assures me that the numbness in my toes will fade, the persistent cough will subside, and that the finest, softest wool in Thedas comes from a village deep in the Anderfels, knitted with pins no thicker than—_

_*_

Of course, it had not been so easy, shacking up with the Iron Bull. There were, first, the raised eyebrows from the servantry, when Dorian's little room, deep in the mountain, was found cleaned out: easily dismissed. Then the endless parade of Chargers in and out of their quarters, in the following weeks. They took their day-to-day orders from a Tevinter, and were used to thinking of them as people, rather than a class of northern bogeymen, but a _nob_ was a different matter entirely.

He was questioned, picked over for nits, taken to the barracks down the mountain, given an archery lesson, and challenged to a duel by the company mage, which he accepted, and lost. He had known from the start that he would never have their love, or even their affection, but fighting his hardest and nearly being skewered by a lance of fire before yielding was what won him their respect. A pampered altus was no match for a scrappy Dalish warrior. All was right and well in the world. Once they were assured that Dorian was not a desire demon come from the Fade to enslave their beloved captain, the whispers began in earnest.

With the sheen of Inquisitor Lavellan and Seeker Pentaghast's _affaire de coeur_ having worn off and no stablehands having impregnated any diplomats recently, Skyhold, being isolated and insular, needed something to attach itself to. The Inquisitor's pet qunari and the ambassador's pet Tevinter were as good as anything—better, even. And so they were expected to murder one another within a month, or else they were a curiosity, or an affront to decency, or they were wildly romantic _._

Maker preserve him, but it _was_ wildly romantic, from Iron Bull's horrible morning breath, to the revelation that he really did only own three pairs of trousers, two of them identical, and the third, carnation-pink—his _party pants—_ all of them tent-like. Dorian had, after much effort, expanded his collection to six pairs, one of which was now draped over their footboard, flapping in the light breeze from the window. The rest of their clothes made a trail from the door to the bed; Dorian, pushing himself from where he'd been resting on Bull's chest, took a moment to appreciate the sight.

"So," Bull said, running his hand down Dorian's back. "What are you so nervous about, big guy?"

Well. That saved him a bit of trouble. The sex had done nothing to relax him—if anything, it made his timing even worse. "I have never been nervous in my entire life," said Dorian. That got a snort out of Bull, at least. "But, as long as you're asking, I do—have something to show you."

He reached down off the side of the bed to retrieve his own trousers, and pulled Mae's letter from the pocket. Bull took it wordlessly. "Nice handwriting," he said, once he'd read through it.

"She employs a secretary with very good handwriting on her behalf."

"Good to know she's got at least one flaw."

That was... not unfair. At his most maudlin and homesick, Dorian became rapturous about Mae's iron will and effortless dress sense. The Tilani estates had, for years, been the only place in all the world that would welcome with open arms, until he'd carved out a place with Bull.

"I'm going to take the post," Dorian said. "In case there was any doubt in your mind."

"Sure." Bull set the letter aside. "Do you what you gotta do, big guy. When do we leave?"

There was a note of stubbornness in his tone. It set Dorian on edge, immediately.

" _We_ don't," Dorian replied, "because you're not an idiot, and know precisely what happens to qunari in Tevinter. But—I have a solution."

"Yeah?"

"Some long ago Magister Pavus had an affair with a Mortalitasi, which was all very scandalous at the time. She purchased an estate on the border with Nevarra for her trysts. It's rotting away, now, but if I express an interest in its upkeep, it can be mine within months. I've the money for it." Or he would, at least. Mae paid generous wages to all her staff, and he had learned from Lady Josephine that finding financing was largely a matter of blinding investors with one's gleaming bullshit. "We could use it."

Bull nodded along. "So we meet there...."

"Whenever we can, I suppose. It will take some planning, and a great deal of discretion on both our parts, but we can make it work."

"And that's it, huh. A few days here and there with your dirty little secret in the south."

"Look at this," Dorian said, gesturing around at their little room, the home they'd carved out for themselves. The split dragon's teeth on their own shelf, which had turned out to be far too cumbersome to wear as necklaces, their books, sorted by subject and alphabetized. Scorch marks on the ceiling. "It can't last forever. You know that. I know that. If you have some better idea, I'm glad to hear it."

Bull laced his fingers over his belly and studied Dorian, for a time. This was the least palatable flavor of regard in the Iron Bull's repertoire, the battlefield look, the one you received when he had dropped all pretense of being—Sera's words—a duffer, and was cataloging all your weaknesses, in preparation for the assault. Horns _down_. The knot of nerves in Dorian's belly tightened. "Sure," Bull said, at last, and picked up the letter."Forget all this. Join the Chargers. Stay with me. What's Tevinter ever done for you?"

"It made me proud," Dorian said, feeling an odd—not odd, perfectly justified, they had spoken of this before, Bull _knew_ his feelings for his country—anger well up in him. "It made me strong."

"The Qun did all that for me," Bull said."I left it."

As though it had been so simple for him! A sunken dreadnought, an assassin thrown off the battlements, and he was right as rain. It was a load of shit, and it sat between them like one. Dorian attempted, "Can you imagine—would you love me as a cringing southern mage, apologizing to Andraste and the Maker for an accident of my birth? I've had more than enough of that for one lifetime, I assure you."

"I say yes to this, you go back—a year from now we see each other," Bull said, opening his eye. There were storm clouds in his gaze. "Maybe I'm going to walk into that house and not know who I'm talking to. Two years from now—you and your Mae could be dead."

"I didn't know you had took such a dim view of my integrity."

"Hey, Tevinter's corrupted better people than you."

A fair point: it had corrupted his father. "Or my survival skills!" Dorian said, rather than dwell.

"You and me both know following Josie around Orlais for a few years isn't the same as throwing yourself into a snakepit."

Also infuriatingly true, but mostly infuriating. There were few original plots in the Game; Dorian had been raised steeped in the Magisterium's endless dramas, his parents' intrigues, and had seen most of them, by now, and Bull knew this. Bull had bought him drinks to get the stories out of him. A different tack, then: "Bull, you have everything you possibly want," he said. "You have your Chargers, you have your freedom, you have potsof money, you have—"

" _You_ ," said Bull. "With me."

"Yes, that, too. And I have been there to see you attain all of it."

"And you're gonna up and walk away from it, for—what, the chance to pass a few laws? The thrill of assassins climbing in your window at night?"

"I'm going for myself," Dorian said, his anger rising like a flame. They knew one another better than this, this was nothow this conversation was meant to go. "I'm going for Mae. I'm going to throw it in my father's face. Really, Bull, is my having an ambition of my own the _hill_ you want us to die on?"

As soon as he said the words, he wished he could snatch them out of the air, crumple them before they reached Bull's ears. Bull had insisted the Inquisitor bring Dorian along to the Storm Coast, for a possible fight with Venatori—Bull's face, slicked with drizzle, his stricken look, the Inquisitor's muttered, _You know what,_ _fuck this._ The Chargers' retreat. The pressure of Bull's hand on Dorian's, strong enough to grind his bones. And the rest.

He had watched the Iron Bull become simply Bull, and slowly discover _I want,_ rather than _What is needed?;_ for selfishness, there was no better teacher in all of Thedas than Dorian Pavus, and Dorian had applied himself thoroughly to the role. He had _been there_. Only to throw it in Bull's face now.

"Good line, kadan. I bet you've been saving that one up," Bull said. "For a rainy day, even."

"I see we're not going to settle this now," Dorian snapped, rather than apologize.He slid off their bed, gathered his clothes. "If you need me, you'll find me in the library."

Bull watched him. Dorian felt the weight of his gaze. He had made no move to cover himself, the entire discussion. He simply _was_ : still, leaden, remote, a statue made flesh. Furious, no doubt, though Dorian could not meet his eyes. He left, and shut the door quietly behind him.

*

_9:42 Dragon_

_Dorian,_

_Cold as piss, here. Thanks for the scarf. And the sweets. Especially the sweets._

_Red templars shitting up everything. Wish you were here to shit them up back with me, with FIRE. I can only keep so much in a bottle. You store it up your arse. Buckles wants to send me back to Skyhold, but I'm fine. I'm just tired._

_Tell Widdle I'm bringing her back all the samples. No, don't tell her--_

*

The effects his of invitation from Mae, had been negligible, otherwise. Leliana had all mail to and from Skyhold read—and redacted, when necessary—and she and Lady Josephine had paid him a courtesy visit in his corner of the library to inform him that he oughtn't say anything he would regret.

 _That's it?_ Dorian had said. _No obliquely worded threats to set your legion of assassins on me, should I divulge any of the Inquisition's secrets?_

Leliana had raised an eyebrow. Josephine, as she always did when assassins, or murders, were mentioned, suddenly became mute and stone deaf. _We could arrange a monthly visit, if it would assuage your pride. Josie, do we still have Florianne's head in storage?_

 _No, no, I'm a patriot, I'm afraid,_ Dorian had hastened to reply, because there was no doubt in his mind that they did, in fact, still have the head at hand, and that he _would_ wake up with it on his bedside table some morning. _I prefer my assassins homegrown, thank you._

 _It's just as well,_ Josephine had said. _You know far less than you think you do_.

Cullen, though he was almost never invited to his fellow advisors' little intimidation parties, knew what they knew, and had congratulated Dorian on his new appointment. The Inquisitor had remembered Dorian existed long enough to do the same. It had gone no farther than that: a few fellow archivists and researchers might miss him, if Dorian cared to tell them, but he had put years of work into making them forget he was a noble. If not for Bull, he would depart Skyhold as quietly as a fart in the night.

He debated heading to the library, as he'd said he would, but if Bull chose to seek him out, there was no reason to make it easy for him. A hunt would have more dramatic impact, at least. The Undercroft, then.

If anyone in Skyhold would understand this, it was Sera.

Some years back, a mad dwarf calling herself the Arcanist, who had allegedly studied magic in the most backwater of all the southern Circles, had obtained a travel permit from the Magisterium to learn from Tevinter's greatest mages. The Magisterium would, after all, have its little jokes. The upper crust of Tevinter society had watched her conduct her little experiments, question their conventional wisdom, utterly demolish young enchanters at debate, and in duels, until they realized: she was brilliant. A genuine novelty.

It was at this point that she became the most clamored-after houseguest in the Imperium, over the Ambassadoria's protests at her very existence. The Arcanist never responded to a single invitation, but chose some scholar or theoretician she found particularly interesting, and showed up at her or his door with nothing but an open mind, a hammer, and, it was said, a distressing rustling in her bags.

Dorian and Alexius had not been scholars, nor had they been theoreticians. They had been desperate men with a dangerous idea, and had not published their findings, which put them well beneath the Arcanist's vaunted notice. Alexius had not cared, but it chafed at Dorian. Such genius—meddling with the weft and weave of _time itself—_ such a light should not have hidden under a bushel. But they received no momentous knock at the door, and Dorian had left before the deed could be completed, and the rest was, quite literally, history.

 _Well, that's weird!_ was all Dagna had had to say about his researches, when Dorian came to the Undercroft on behalf of Skyhold's archivists. Dagna had removed a dozen books from Skyhold's library without alerting any of them; there were ruffled feathers; something had to be done. He had struck up a very casual conversation with her about the nature of time, and had gotten nothing more from her, except, _That sure is weird._

And now, he descended the stairs to hear the rush of the waterfall, the faint, irritating magical whistle of some artefact, hearable only by those connected to the Fade, and to see the fabled Arcanist bent backwards over her low anvil, halfway to being fucked to within an inch of her life by Dorian's dearest friend.

"Maker's breath, you two, it's not even noon," Dorian said, from the doorway, covering his eyes the moment he realized what was going on. This being hypocritical of him, on a day where he had already used up his monthly quota of hypocrisy, he waited at to be invited in.

"Piss up your arse," Sera said, her voice muted and her hearing muffled by Dagna's thighs clamped around her ears.

"Sera," Dagna said, with a giggle—the same giggle that accompanied wall-shaking explosions and very large swords. She patted the back of Sera's head. "It's Dorian."

Sera popped up and wiped the back of her mouth on her sleeve. "Well, he can go piss twiceup his arse."

"Would that I could," Dorian said, wistfully. "I got your summons."

At long last, after much straightening of her own clothing, Sera came around the anvil. She looked him up and down, sandpapering him with her scrutiny. "You sound soppy," she said. "Doesn't he sound soppy?" Dagna, who was busy setting herself to rights, having recovered. "Shite, you _look_ soppy. Don't cry on me, I'm already wet enough."

"If I'm interrupting..."

"Already did. Too late! May as well tell me what's wrong," Sera said. She slipped past him to go up the stairwell, and settled at a point out of Dagna's earshot. A bit of her hair stuck up in the back, where it had been pulled. She hadn't bothered to smooth it down.

"It's, well. Bull."

"Ooooh, big shock."

"I may be going back to Tevinter soon, and he did not take it well."

Sera took the news of his return with less shock than Dorian might have expected—just a tilt of the head—and, well, she was as close as anyone could be to Leliana, short of someone who was in the process of being flayed by her; perhaps Leliana had let something drop. "And then," she said, "you dropped another fat one in the shite bucket again by saying something awful. 'Nother big shock. What was it this time?"

"I may have"—Dorian had a sudden urge to scratch the side of his nose, a nervous habit, long mastered—"evoked, well, you know."

"I don't," Sera said flatly.

"The dreadnought," he said. "The Chargers."

"Well, that was bloody stupid, and you should go apologize." Dagna, who had moved on to tinkering with the horrible whistling thing, nodded her silent agreement.

"A masterstroke," Dorian said. "Apologize! That had never occurred to me, thank you."

"See," Sera said, "you're doing it. You're being an arse because you're not getting what you want right away. I'm sorry I don't have some genius plan to make Bull forgive you _and_ be all right with you fucking off to Tevinter without him. Why's it so important, anyway? Is it Mae?" She drew the word _Mae_ out to ten times its normal dimensions. Sera had built her up as a goddess-like figure, a gracious and bountiful font of chocolates, candies, and fine winter clothing; Mae referred to Sera as _your darling little friend;_ and Dorian was certain they'd exchanged letters behind his back, though he wasn't sure they would know what to do with one another in real life.

"I'm to become her chief of staff at the Magisterium, yes," Dorian said, and braced himself for impact. He _had_ been looking forward to this.

"Chief of staff," Sera said, rolling the phrase around in her mouth. "Chief of _staff_. You gonna take on a big staff, or little staff?"

"Oh, absolutely enormous—all the staff I can possibly handle."

"Thought so. Bet you can handle a lot more than you used to—you know, what with the Chargers, and all."

 _There_ was an image. "I find that my capacity has been greatly expanded, yes," Dorian said, and, at the sight of her toothy grin, tamped down the urge to ruffle her hair. He had once imagined that Felix Alexius was the closest he would ever get to a sibling, and Rilienus (or any of the other handsome young men he'd fallen in love with before him) was the closest thing he'd find to a—Maker preserve him— _husband._ He had not thought he could have more, that someone would openly mock him and he would love her for it. That he could think of having children with another man. _There_ was a desire he'd never thought in its entirety.

Sera tensed, as though hesitating, then rested her head on his shoulder. Her feathery hair tickled at his exposed sliver of shoulder. "Widdle wants to go back to her Circle—her first one. They say the Veil is... thin, there," she said. "There's still people living there. It can't be that bad. But I don't know if I can go with her."

Dorian held his tongue. The parallels were clear, yes. She would come to the point.

"And that's just the first place she wants to take me," Sera went on. "Cumberland, for the Sun Dome. Antiva City. Kirkwall, even. I've got friends in all those cities, but... I want to stay here, yeah? Soft beds, hot meals, big walls, big fancy missions every now and then with Buckles, and even then, we're not traveling rough, not like we used to. I've gotten all soft."

She patted her belly, which Dorian knew full well was flat as a board. Over the course of their acquaintance, Sera had gone from merely lean to downright ropy. From hissing and brushing off all touch, to leaning on him. "I'm not missing anything, staying at Skyhold," Dorian said. "It seems you will be. How much gold do you think you can get from the top of the Sun Dome before they catch you?"

"We could go to Minrathous," she said. "I'll watch Tevinter burn soon as anywhere else. You're the man with the match. It'd be fun!"

"Sera, that's—very flattering," Dorian replied. Beyond flattering. Whatever he had done to push them from _I like you. Don't ruin it._ to _Sure, I'll follow you into certain danger—_ lest he grow as soppy as Sera seemed to think he was, he said, "But you didn't call me down here for us to wail at one another."

"Oh, yeah," Sera said, and hopped up, as though the two of them had not just had a genuine _moment_. "Widdle wanted you."

They descended the stairs again. The void-fucked whistling from the Fade had _not_ stopped, in all Dagna's tinkering, but he had managed to tune it out.

"You should tell it," Dagna said. It was some sort of sphere, and Dorian was going to smash it to pieces. "You make it funny."

"So," Sera said, without preamble, as though she hadn't just told him more of her feelings in which always boded well. "The two of us are in circumstances, yeah?" She closed her thumb and forefinger around an improbable point on her forearm to show just how deep in circumstances they'd been. It was only polite to nod, impressed. "And she shoves me off, yelling something about crystals and resonances, or whatever, it's all daft to me, and I barely have time to get her to put a robe on before she runs off and I don't see her for three days." There was a bit of bite, to that last, and Dagna's jaw set: a common occurrence, then and not an uncontentious one.

"I don't see what this has to do with me," Dorian said.

"First rule of magic," Dagna said. "You can't move physical objects from one place to another." She clapped her hands together. "No.... poofing. You can bend the rule, but you can't break it. Except in one famous case: you."

"I don't entirely know how Alexius did it," Dorian admitted. He had left well before they'd gotten to the stage of physical trials, though the Arcanist didn't need to know that. Sera did know, but had not been even remotely interested in the details. "And the Inquisitor and I moved in _when_ , not in _where_."

"Did your bodies disappear? Did you turn up somewhere else? Rule bent! That means it can be broken."

"Regardless," Dorian said, rather than concede the point, "you want me to help you solve one of the fundamental problems of magic?"

"I could always use a spare body."

"You mean another pair of hands."

"Oh, no," Dagna said. "Those are really easy to come by, these days. Well—what I really need you to do is crack the code in Alexius's journals, which I have, for whatever reason? Someone gave them to me. They're in a cipher I haven't seen before."

She had them because someone had suggested to the Inquisitor that Dorian might want them, and Dorian, having forced himself to watch Alexius's beheading, had been too angry at nearly everyone, including himself, to accept. That Dagna did not truly want (or need) his help was... a relief. As much as he would like to have been involved in real research again, some good, honest intellectual work, the last documented case of someone attempting to move so much as a pebble, a chair, a piece of paper, the tellings varied by Circle, the hapless mage had blown a hole in the wall, or blown out all the windows in their house, or mangled their own arm beyond recognition. However—"I'm sure Leliana has any number of code-breakers you could use," he demurred.

"Yes, and I would have gone to her first! But—"

"I won't let her. Those are _your things_ ," Sera said, with a scowl. "You didn't want them, but there might be something about you in there you don't want someone to see. So it has to be you, or nobody."

He had been quite prepared to turn Dagna down. That part of his life was finished. Felix was gone, and with him, his last link to the Alexius family: the thought of him was a dull stab, an old ache, bone-deep but diminished by time. But the way Sera had planted her feet at shoulder's width, her arms crossed, prepared to argue with her lover—she had fought the woman she loved for him, for this, on more than one occasion.

"Then it has to be me," Dorian said. "Have the papers delivered to my room, and I'll start right away."

If nothing else, it would be a distraction.

*

_9:42 Dragon_

_Sera,_

_For a start, if the 'samples' you speak of are red lyrium, or tainted by red lyrium,_ put them back _. Get rid of them. Widdle (I cannot believe we're calling the_ Arcanist __'Widdle') already has plenty, and there are people who are paid shocking amounts of money to obtain them for her, and I don't like to think on what she's doing with them, down in her lair. If you come back too ill for her to do anything down in your _lair, I will never forgive you. If you_ must _bring her something, get ahold of some of the Emprise's azure granite for her; my spies tell me she's been on a stone-carving tear lately. The figurines are absolutely inescapable._

_Stay warm. Wash the scarf in cold water, if you absolutely must wash it. Don't thank me for it, thank Magister Tilani, care of the Vyrantium Circle. And for fuck's sake, don't get yourself killed—_

_*_

Their room was enormous, by Skyhold's standards; and very empty, without Bull in it. When they argued, Bull retreated to the Chargers' barracks, more out of consideration than anything else: Dorian had nowhere else to sleep. He had tried Sera's little room, and the armchair he'd staked out in the library, but he liked his comfort rather more than he liked his pride.

Dorian set the box that contained Alexius's work on their bed, which was made, very neatly, corners tucked in to military standards. (Krem standards.) No sign of their fucking, or their spat. Mae's letter sat on Dorian's desk where he'd left it, but it was dead-center. The quills were sharpened, the ink was fresh, things Bull did for Dorian as a matter of course, because it pleased him, turned to pins with which to prick. Even the paper Dorian pulled from a drawer in preparation for looking over Alexius's journals had come from Bull's hand, Bull, who had taken the effort to find out what paper-makers Dorian preferred, what size quill, what sort of ink—

To work. He turned back to the box, gave it a cursory flipping-through. Someone far more organized than Dorian had arranged the notebooks and folios in rough chronological order. He was no codebreaker, but he knew his way around a cipher as well as any paranoid altus—as though there were any other sort—and one of his first tasks as an apprentice had been to keep Alexius's secret research journals. It had made him feel important, as a lonely boy. He remembered enough of it to get by. The first notebook he pulled from the box was a slim, red volume, dated not long after Dorian had stormed off.

And it was gibberish, once Dorian applied the code he'd learned at an apprentice. Unreadable.

This was ridiculous. Sera was very kind— _very_ kind, underneath her layers of bullshit—but Alexius would not have used a simple substitution cipher for his private work. The key could be anything. The Canticle of Transfigurations. One of those interminable books about the volume of Divine Galatea's shits. A dirty pirate novel. He didn't even know where to _begin._ Easier, to pass this upstairs to Leliana; let whoever decoded them discover what they would about young Dorian. He would survive it.

 _Come on, big guy, you're selling yourself short,_ Bull would be saying, right about now. _You gonna give up this easily?_

As though on cue, a key scraped in one of their room's three locks. Dorian turned back to the journal and made sure he was looking directly at it when Bull padded into the room.

"Didn't think you'd be back so soon," Bull said.

"Did you forget something?" Dorian asked. "Your robe? Your favorite hammer?"

"It's a _maul_ ," Bull said, automatically. The corners of his lips turned upward, but it wasn't a smile. Yet.

"Well, regardless, I lent it to Sera." Dorian turned in his chair, casual and unbothered. He scratched the tip of his nose with his quill's feather. "Maker knows what she means to do with it. We can only hope she cleans it before she returns it."

"First off, Sera couldn't even lift it," said Bull. He sounded—not unamused."You done stalling?"

"Right," Dorian said. Right. What would Sera do? Throw a rock through his window with an apology tied to it. What would Mae do? "Bull. _Regardless_ of the aspersions you cast on my character and my finely honed killer instinct, I should not have brought up—that day."

Bull's face was impassive. "You even sound like you even mean that."

"Yes, and the Minanter will dry up before I grovel for your forgiveness," Dorian replied. "If that's what you're looking for, you don't know me. I said something dreadful that I should not have said; I regret it sincerely, and that will have to be good enough for you."

Then he cracked, scowled, crossed his arms over his ample chest, and leaned against the door. It was the insubordination pose, reserved for when one of his crew crossed the line, even by the Chargers' relaxed standards. Perhaps he'd learned his stern disapproval at his tamassrans' knee—young Ashkaari, mimicking their posture, all the better to keep the other children in line. Dorian found the idea darling, and would have even managed to find it so now, had Bull's face not taken on a puzzled cast.

"What," Dorian said, "are you thinking about?"

"I don't get it," Bull replied. "Nothing you've told me about Mae...."

"You don't need to _understand it_ ," Dorian snapped, and, well, there went their progress. "You need to love me enough to support what I wish to do."

Bull's face was blank, for a moment, for the very barest second, as it always was, when Dorian said the word. He had occasionally suspected that Bull still did not wholly understand the concept, for all that he said the word 'love' at the correct moments; that 'kadan' was the closest he could come to approximating it, and that was all right. Affection was not a culturally bound concept, and loyalty was not, either. Fucking knew no nation, nor did mutual respect, nor indefatigable erections for certain fire tricks in the bedroom. Somewhere in-between the two of them, they had found a thing that worked.

Then the moment passed. Bull's smile was perfectly pleasant and charming, and therefore meant to set Dorian on edge. "You know me," he said. "I've gotta understand it before I swallow it. You're not telling me something, kadan. Sure, you admire Mae. I get that. She's your friend. But you don't _die_ for people who are just your friends."

Dorian let out a shallow chuckle at the innuendo. It was better than admitting the truth: that under no circumstances did he wish to speak of his first—second, really—meeting with Mae. "She took me in, after a fashion, after the incident with my parents."

"See, there's the gap in your story," said Bull. He walked over to the bed and sat down, moving the box of papers to the floor. They had been heavy even for Dorian to carry up the stairs, but in Bull's hands, all things were made light. "You never say how you got out. Nobody ever asks, either. But you know as well as I do that it's hard to keep a mage locked up—you've gotta convince them that they _need_ to be under key."

An apprehension seized Dorian: they were years and years past snide remarks about the needle and the mask. "I'm not some target you need to squeeze for information," he said. "You don't need to bait me. And if you must know, I jumped out the window."

Bull's smile faltered: "The window?"

"It _is_ difficult to hold an altus," said Dorian. "Wards on the doors and windows; walls and floors reinforced with steel, so that it would take me time to burn or punch through them—time enough for someone to notice. I might have broken the wards with blood magic, but, it seems, I was the only one in the house who still had a lick of sense; and wards are all well and good, but they need to be renewed. Someone was sloppy with the windows. It was a three story drop, but I have enough talent with force magic to slow my fall."

Bull nodded. "So, then what—Mae was waiting under your window with her arms outstretched?" he asked.

"I'm getting there." Dorian went on: it was a three-day walk to Qarinus, with no money, little food, and, worst of all, no staff with which to defend himself. The first night, he'd slept in a hayloft, and felt very dashing and bold about it; the second night, hunger gnawing at him, having drunk out a pig trough, he felt less so.

"I looked like something that had been scraped from the bottom of a sink," he said. "But I'd fashioned a fake staff from a branch, and a few sparks from my hands convinced the guards at the city gates that I was some sort of religious eccentric. And, well. I hadn't been to Qarinus since I was a child, and I hadn't the faintest idea where my friends' homes were, which was what mother was counting on." Dorian stroked his chin. "My beard was _this_ long."

"Oh, no," Bull said dryly.

As he'd wandered the streets in the half-dark, a sharply dressed elven woman had come up to him. In his entire life, an elf had never simply _come up to him_. If she was a family retainer, he'd have had no idea—what had he known of their slaves, at the time? If this was a trap, he'd thought, he was more than capable of killing his way out of it. Perhaps that was the sort of person he was, now. He would find out. None of this bore telling. "I was found in the city by an agent of Magister Tilani's," Dorian said, instead. "She told me to follow her, and for want of anything better to do, I did."

"Damn," Bull said. "I'd tell that story every chance I got."

"Yes, well, that's the difference between us. I don't relish it."

And neither did Bull, he knew. Unnerving others with tales of Fog Warriors and Tal-Vashoth kept him sane: if the stories could be made to entertain a crowd, they could be rendered toothless.

Mae's house had been elegant. Money could buy objects, but it could not buy good taste, he said, gesturing at Bull's pink robe, draped over the top of the armoire like a fringed carcass. "You must understand, she was one of my examiners when I applied to become an enchanter."

"You told me about that. You said the paper was shit."

"First of all, I said it had _good ideas_ ," Dorian said, "but that, as I was twenty-three years old at the time, and applying for the status well before I should have, my execution was wanting. I passed on audacity alone. I challenged Magister Tilani to a duel, to be precise. I think the reviewers approved of my bloodlust." Because necromancy, Mae had said, was all well and good for those would-be magisters, those Nevarran perverts—the phrase she had settled on, after much invective, was _corpse-fuckers—_ but it was hardly a basis for a proper altus's style of combat magic, regardless of how deeply he'd researched it. Dorian had turned up his arrogant little nose and offered her a live demonstration, if only she'd come around the table.

"And she took you in," Bull said, after Dorian explained all that, and after he had cut short the more technical explanations.

"Well. Not exactly."

The elf had taken him through the servant's entrance to the house. Magister Tilani was a long-time acquaintance of Alexius's, he knew. She had not been impressed by him, either, and had been the only one to vote against him—he knew. The door the elf had knocked on opened into an east-facing parlor, where Magister Tilani herself sat, in a sumptuous silk robe, her curling golden hair pulled into a plain knot at the base of her neck. It was not a Tevinter color. She was sickly pale, by the standards of the breed, and everyone knew that light-eyed people were innately suspicious. It was said, with the most sympathetic sneer possible, that a grandmother, a great-grandmother, had been an Orlesian apostate, and had sadly passed down her looks.

Never mind all that. Any number of things were said about her. Magister Tilani's armchair was enormous, and she had a book in her lap, and a staff within reach, and she was _barefoot_ , of all things. Her toes were painted emerald. Dorian stood in the doorway, his scalp and chin crawling, as though with lice.

_Despite my best efforts—Enchanter Dorian Pavus,_ Mae had said.

 _I know how this looks, but really, I was out for a stroll,_ Dorian said. _It's my daily constitutional._

_You're an escaped prisoner, and you're wondering right now whether I'll return you to your father._

"That can't be how it happened," Bull interrupted. "That's way too snappy, even for you."

"Well, no," Dorian said. "I stood there gaping at her like a fish, and I _did_ scratch myself, but that's hardly a good story, is it?"

 _That's me,_ Dorian had said, in reality, and finally gave in to the urge to run both hands through his awful, itchy beard. The expensive carpet would survive a few bugs falling out into it.

_You're an escaped prisoner, and you're wondering right now whether there's something in it for me, to call your mother._

Dorian's breath had caught, then. She would do no such thing—his escape had been bloodless, or at least the only blood had been his own, from the falling, but he _was_ prepared to fight for his freedom. But Magister Tilani had gestured to the empty armchair across from her. _Sit,_ she said.

He sat. It was too low, and put him well beneath her, so that he had to look up to meet her eyes.

 _You have no money,_ she said. _You have no access to your funds. I assume you have no real plans._

 _How do you know,_ Dorian had said, _about my father._

Magister Tilani had shrugged, very gracefully _. I won't try to convince you he's a_ good _man, but when a man like Halward Pavus starts looking into certain kinds of magic, I pay attention._

_And so you pluck me off the street? With no ulterior motive?_

_We're both deviants,_ Magister Tilani had said, simply, as though that explained everything.

 _You're not a deviant. You're living—_ Dorian had shifted in his chair, trying to get comfortable, for it had not been made along human lines— _honestly._

_Of course I am. I'm wealthy, powerful, well-connected, and feared. One feels a sense of responsibility._

"Feared?" Bull interrupted.

"The late Lord Magister Tilani was something of a professional patsy for any number of schemes in the Magisterium." It was said that he'd had been a weak man, who had simply accepted his daughter's eccentricities, never mind that she'd never get an heir on a woman. Dorian had met him once, as a child. He had simply seemed _kind_. "The Lady Magister Tilani," he said, "cut a swathe through those who were responsible for his eventual death." It went without saying that it was a literal swathe, in most cases.

 _So you pity me,_ Dorian had said, which, in retrospect, had been very childish of him. _Just like you pitied me in my examination._

 _Please. I voted against you, because I thought you were a smug, spoiled little shit who needed to be knocked down a few pegs,_ Magister Tilani had said. Her tone was caustic, but her eyes were gentle. _I pity you_ now. _My girl will show you to a guest room; rest, and we'll speak this evening._

"I figured," Dorian said,"that if she was going to do something to me, I was prepared for it. If she was going to go to my mother, I was ready. And despite all that, I must have slept for—twelve hours? I don't remember."

Bull made a neutral sound. At some point during the telling, he'd scooted backwards onto the bed, and was now cross-legged. Any other time, Dorian might have rebuked him for it: Bull had pains in his hip, these days, which were only exacerbated by sitting the way he did. Dorian had learned enough just healing to ease them, if Bull ever asked, but Bull would not have magic performed on him if he was not dying.

"So you wake up, she feeds you, and she owns you now," Bull said. "That's it?"

"Is this how the Ben-Hassrath taught you how to extract information? Andraste's ass, let me tell the story, if you want to hear it so badly."

For whatever reason—the verve, the fact that Dorian had seemed to think this was a real Ben-Hassrath interrogation, which he did not—this made Bull smile.

The robes left out for him had been a pleasing rust-red, Dorian continued and a bit tight in the chest, but he hadn't complained. No doubt the clothes he'd been wearing had been burned; if they hadn't been, he would have set them on fire himself.

 _You can't stay here,_ were the first words out of Magister Tilani's mouth, when Dorian was shown into her dining room. She was still wearing what must have been her working robes, a magnificent, pure white silk, with sapphire-blue crystals sewn into the hem and the cuffs of her sleeves, to set off her southerner's eyes.

Dorian's stomach plummeted. The food, which was so so spicy his nostrils pricked from the smell of it doorway, would be ashes on his tongue, he knew.

 _Not for more than a week,_ Magister Tilani added quickly, _Maker's breath, boy, the look on your face. Did you think I would turn you out? After what you've been through?_

 _What do you know of it?_ he said, taking a seat at the table. It was an intimate little room, made to hold only twenty guests, perhaps.

_Only what I can guess. I have librarians who inform me when certain books are requested—the ones on breaking minds. Imagine my shock when the little snot from Vyrantium's principled, respected father... you know the rest. Aquinea will find you eventually. She's a very effectual woman._

_She is,_ Dorian agreed, tucking into his food. _Effectual_ was certainly a word for it. The less said, the better.

 _So,_ Maevaris said. _Where will you go, once you leave? What's your plan?_

Dorian had no money. No clothes, no staff, though he'd be sure to nick one, before he ran. Friends and erstwhile lovers scattered across the country, but he was too scandalous for most of them to touch—no _connections_ , but the one sitting across the table from him. The only proof that she meant him well was that she hadn't harmed him so far, which meant nothing, as far as magisters were concerned. _Maybe I'll join a mercenary company,_ he'd said, in between bites. The flatbread was sweet, the chicken was tender, he could have slept comfortably on the pillows of rice her kitchens had provided to drown the heat in. (In the present, Bull chuckled.) _Maybe I'll take up a trade! I could become a cobbler, if I haven't dragged the family name through the mud enough. Imagine the scandal._

Magister Tilani reached across the table. She wore three rings: a sapphire, an enormous diamond, and a silver band, of dwarven make. She had been married—if, it was said, it could be called that—to a dwarf. Dorian had seen them once, at a party; she had picked a piece of food out of her husband's beard, and leaned down, very far down, to whisper something in his ear that had made the man go bright red, under his beard. Dorian's own circle of like-minded friends looked upon Magister Tilani with a mixture of envy and horror: she was not like them, but she had the life they wanted and were not bold enough to reach for.

She reached across the table, and took his hand in her own, and squeezed. No one had taken his hand in years, least of all a near-stranger. _Pavus,_ she said, _you can just say you have no idea. It won't kill you to be sincere, I promise_.

As rebukes went, it was gentle, but Dorian cringed from it. _You're right_ , he'd said, and swallowed hard around a sudden lump in his throat. Then he let out a great, juddery sigh; he had slept, but he was still weary. Pride demons pricked at him in his sleep, as they had in his months of captivity: _You're better than this, Dorian. Why should you bear it? Your imprisonment? Her largesse?_ But what he saw in Maevaris Tilani's eyes was not condescension. Not pity. She—felt for him. She wanted him to do well. How novel. With his free hand, he took a deep sip from his wineglass, and stared into his plate. There had to be something he was good at, something aside from magic, in a land where you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a mage. He had looks and wit; those were not enough.

 _I spent years cataloging the Alexius family library,_ he said, at last. He did not let her go. _I could hire myself as an archivist. Or a professional researcher. Or even—a tutor for difficult boys. Maker knows I have some experience with them._

 _That's a start,_ Maevaris said. _Very good. I can find you a posting and keep your parents away, once they figure out I'm the one sheltering you. And if you happen to hear anything interesting in your wanderings..._

_I'm to pass it along to you. As a courtesy._

"And what you're saying is... she made you."

"I suppose you could say that—"

"No, no," Bull said, a slow, wide, toothy grin lighting up his face. "She _Mae'd_ you."

Dorian buried his face in his hands. "Yes, you could say that, too."

"You weren't the first," Bull said. The grin faded. "And she was really good at what she did, by the time she got to you."

"I—no, I wasn't," Dorian said. "I've met a few others. Not that we've banded together and formed the Tilani's Unfortunates Society."

"No," Bull said, "I mean, sounds to me like she was _really_ good at what she did. Pick a young—what'd you say, deviant—off the streets, save them from getting their minds ripped to shreds, whatever. Make them feel special and welcome, for the first time in their lives. Like they're not freaks. So they'll walk into fire for you."

The room was getting dark, by now; Dorian flicked his hand to illuminate the torches on the walls. He tugged too hard at the Veil, when he made the spark to ignite them; they flared high, before settling to a comfortable flicker.

"You speak of your tamassrans. They do the same thing to you, from birth."

"Doesn't mean I don't question it. We're Qunari—we're supposed to question it."

And draw the correct conclusions, or else have their minds destroyed, as surely as Dorian's would have been, yes. "If you were called back to the Qun by the woman who brought you up? If you had the chance to prevent what happened to you on Seheron—if you could stop it happening to another Ben-Hassrath, would you? Even at the cost of your own life—would you?"

"It's different. That Ben-Hassrath wouldn't even know they needed saving. They'd have considered all the angles, and decided their sacrifice was worth it."

Oh, amatus, Dorian thought, and crossed the room, to sit on the bed next to him. Hissrad had been a boy when they threw him on Seheron. The Iron Bull had come out the other side of the charnel house. What Dorian would come out of his own Seheron as—Bull's concerns weren't unreasonable. He reached for Bull's face, but Bull flinched away, took his hand, returned it to his side.

"Even at the cost of your own life, huh," Bull said.

Well. If that was how he wanted to be. Dorian stretched his legs out, and sat against the headboard.

"You lost your eye for Krem," Dorian said, then gestured at Bull's entire person, at all of his scars, most of them gotten in someone else's defense. He was big, and he was strong. It followed logically that he should take the blows others could not, and be glad of it, that he could be of use in this way. It was endlessly frustrating to deal with, for all the strides Bull had made in selfishness, these past years. "You lost your fingers for... I can't even imagine what, but it most likely wasn't to save your own neck. Don't lecture me about avoiding self-sacrifice, when your Qun made a perfect martyr of you."

"A martyr," Bull began, but Dorian shook his head.

"You're not listening. I was utterly in her power—she was a magister, and I was a runaway," Dorian said. "No one else would have lifted a finger in my defense. They would have wondered to themselves why in the world my parents didn't try the blood rite sooner. She could have asked _anything_ of me, in that moment. Any number of unsavory things. She could have asked me to kill, or steal, and I was grateful enough that I would have done it. without question. I would not even have hesitated. But all she wanted was a fly on the wall, to listen for. Nothing more."

After all his torturous explaining, this, of all things, had finally sank into Bull's thick skull. Bull gave a short nod. "So, she's"—he pressed his hand to the center of his chest, and he looked anguished—"kadan."

Dorian knew—he knew full well that the word was neither romantic nor sexual in its original usage. Whatever it meant in Bull's head, however... "Yes," Dorian said, "she is. If she died, I would rip Thedas apart looking for her killers—as I would for you. And when it comes down to staying with you or going to her, I _am_ choosing her, Bull, whether you choose to end it or not. We can _choose_ to make it work. So many choices! I understand that it may be baffling to you, but we saved the fucking world, amatus, and now it's at our feet. We can do anything."

He had come up on his knees as he spoke, as Bull turned toward him, and he caught Bull's face between his hands, to press a kiss to the middle of Bull's forehead, right above the near-permanent groove made by his eyepatch. A precious thing, that mark. Bull's palm came up to hold Dorian's hip, his waist—then his chest—to push him away.

"You really think that," Bull said. "Shit, you actually think you two can change Tevinter."

"I think I can do my damnedest," said Dorian, "and if that's not enough for you, I don't know what else I can say. If you're waiting for me to become frustrated with you and end this— _us—_ on my own, you will be waiting for a _very_ long time."

*

_9:44 Dragon_

_Hey, kadan, I don't know how you got the boss to take you out dragon hunting without me, but I'm sure you had a real good reason. For hunting dragons. Without me._

*

Dorian had endless things with which to occupy himself, if he wasn't speaking with Bull: Lady Josephine still had mountains of letters to respond to, which her corps of secretaries had been hard at work on for weeks, and which wanted someone who could forge the ambassador's signature for mind-numbing hours on end.

Krem, who had never liked him much, was largely avoidable, for all that he and Lady Josephine were locked in vigorous negotiations over the end of the Chargers' contract. Given all the time he spent in the Undercroft with Alexius's journals, Sera was less avoidable, but she had declared neutrality on the matter from the start. Vivienne, in between fittings for the holy turnip sack, still needed someone to spar with who wasn't afraid of harming Her Eventual Perfection. If Bull had poured out his woes to her, she gave no indication, but for her ice spells packing an extra wallop. Even if he'd wanted to ask her something—which he emphatically did not—everyone liked to see their local 'Vint get himself beaten to a pulp, and he and Vivienne always had an audience.

He had given up and passed Alexius's notes on to Scrivener, Leliana's pallid, stuttering, hatchet-faced codebreaker, who had made quick work of the cipher; the rest was for Dorian to sort through and transcribe, on Dagna's behalf. Sera was in the Undercroft today, re-stringing her small arsenal of bows. Possibly no one needed so many bows, but Inquisitor Lavellan saw a clanswoman in her, and showered her with ones she picked up in her travels. Dagna worked at emplacing runes in a new version of Alexius's amulet, with Dorian to assist with containing the explosions, as needed. "You're here," she'd said, when the first one had begun shaking violently in her hands, "might as well make yourself useful!" and Dorian had not had much of a choice.

Sera, though she thought the two of them were _daft tits,_ enjoyed the explosions. They were the only useful side-effect of Dagna's many attempts, which numbered in the dozens, by now. They littered every available surface, much to Harritt's annoyance. The ones that weren't inert or charred emitted sparks, here and there. Some of them made the Veil ripple disconcertingly around them, but Dagna deemed them non-lethal and would not let him throw them into the waterfall and be done with it. The ones with the most upsetting properties were locked in a lead box, where they couldn't harm anyone. There were three at Dorian's feet alone, one on his makeshift desk, and two more on the bookshelf behind his head, as he wrote. A pile of them sat discarded on Dagna's workbench, where Sera had sauntered over to mutter in her ear.

Dorian had learned, over a week of squatting in their space, to keep a safe distance from the two of them: like the amulets, they were combustible. They leered at one another incessantly. Dagna was closer to Dorian's age than Sera's, but under Sera's influence she was as horny as a girl. If he left the room to take a shit or fetch them all water, he would be guaranteed to find them all over each other when he returned. Still, it was impossible to forget that she was a genius, not when she questioned him as she did, at twenty miles per second. How had he and Alexius hit on the idea to move through time, anyway? Whom had they bought their silverite from? Did the soil around the quarry have any noteworthy properties; was it near a lyrium vein? What was the first thing they'd managed to move in time without destroying, and how did the blowback affect the surrounding environment—no, not this plane, what would a mage see it do to the _Veil_ —and on, and on, and on. If there was anyone he'd trust to try to replicate his and Alexius's research, it was her.

For all this, and all of Dagna's failures, Alexius's notes were more helpful than Dorian's recollections. They were neat, obsessively detailed. Every diagram, despite the code, was clearly labeled. Not a line out of place in his sigils, no shorthand. As though he had wanted someone to find and replicate the work. The personal journals, Dorian tried to leave untouched: tried, and failed. He was too vain not to wish to know what his first mentor—the man who had found Dorian piss drunk in a brothel and said to himself, _there is potential here—_ had thought of him.

 _9:42 Dragon. 17 Harvestmere. Low & heavy clouds, winds from ENE. Pressure dropping. New kitchen slaves, hard rice at breakfast. The boy and my son were so hungover they did not notice. _This was on the longer side, for an entry. Dorian was never mentioned outside the context of Felix: _The boy has a talent for spirit manipulation. My son could stand to pay more attention at that Circle we're sending him to. Wind from W, pressure steady._ If he'd wanted tidy narrative closure, there was none to be found here.

Mae was innately messy. Her workbench overflowed with phials of this, bottles of that, notebooks, spilled candle wax, empty teacups and wineglasses. Dorian had cleaned it for her, his third day in her house, when he was still under the impression he needed to earn his keep. She had laughed at him and patted his head. But the comparison was unfair. Gereon Alexius had shown him that he was not entirely worthless, despite his endless faults. Years and worlds away, Mae had shown him he was worthy becauseof them. That, too was unfair—Alexius had given him a home; Mae had given him a refuge. An education; a _purpose_.

Dorian returned his attention to writing up some dry treatise of Alexius's—they were all dry. As a scholar, Alexius had been no sparkling wit—which should have been mechanical work, straightforward, before his train of thought was once again interrupted.

"I'm taller," Sera murmured, across the room. "You always get to be the doer. Let me do _you_ for once, yeah?"

"I'm stronger," Dagna replied.

"Wait 'til he's gone," Sera said, across the room. "Ooh, you wait, Widdle. You won't sit for a week. It'll be fun."

Distracted, he listened with half an ear to their banter and half a mind on his work for a long ten minutes of fussing and negotiations before he realized what he was _really_ hearing.

Their voices were perfectly clear, to be sure. Every giggle, ringing, as though he was standing right next to them. But he was not standing next to them. Their voices were coming from—next to his ear—one of the amulets on the bookshelf. Dorian nearly threw his writing desk to the floor in his haste to pick it up and press it to his ear.

"And I want to use the purpleone tonight," Sera was saying. "Give me a rest, we've used the green one all bloody week, at this point you could fit a loaf of bread up my—"

"My dear, dear friends," Dorian said into the amulet. "Sera, I empathize, really, and I _do_ hate to interrupt, but I think we've stumbled upon something."

He looked pointedly across the room at them. Dagna let go of Sera's breast and looked back. She looked at the pile of amulets on her workbench, then back to him. "Keep talking," she said.

The two amulets, despite having been made two days apart from one another, formed a near-perfect pair. "What did you do to them?" Dorian asked, after Sera had left the room, as she always did when things got became too magical for her tastes.

"I have no idea," Dagna said. She scratched her chin. She blew a heavy breath out. "Resonance. The runes—"

And then, without hesitation, she launched into a detailed theory about it, most of which went over Dorian's head. He hadn't studied any of this since his time in the Circle. Enchanting, runecrafting, they had never been of much interest to him, and still were not, despite the past week's constant exposure to them. "Fascinating," Dorian said, when she finally paused for breath. "You should run more tests. See if you can replicate the effect. See how far it can go."

Dagna squinted up at him. "You're thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I," Dorian said, "would be severely worried if I was _ever_ thinking what you were thinking."

Dagna began, "This is..."

"Unprecedented, yes," Dorian said. "If you can replicate this, you'll be rich."

Dagna shrugged: the Inquisition had already made her rich, _filthy_ rich, gold shitting down all over her, in its bid to secure her exclusive services. "You, Bull, Tevinter," she said. "Me... everywhere. Anywhere that won't kill me on sight, anyway. Sera doesn't want to come along, you know. She's dragging her feet. Everywhere I suggest, there's something wrong with it."

She looked sad. Lost. _Fuck me,_ Dorian thought, _I'm about to have a heartfelt moment with the Arcanist._

He took one of the amulets from her and turned it over in his hand. If the feat could be replicated, it would not be a fashionable object, but he was already more than resigned to being Maevaris Tilani's dowdy spinster assistant.

"I tried to suggest Minrathous, but something might happen to _me,_ she says ! Like worse things wouldn't happen to an elf! Like the Chantry didn't get the message when I turned five of their best magekillers into nug steaks."

"I wasn't aware that there was enough left of them for entire steaks," Dorian said. She had promised that the silhouettes would wash off in the next good rain. They had not washed off.

"Well, no," Dagna said, "but you know what I mean. Nug paté."

Judging by the look on Dagna's face, she was about as comfortable with this being the first real conversation they'd ever had as Dorian was. Well—nothing to do but forge onward.

"I don't want to leave her, either," he said. Bull would be killed on sight, at best, or experimented on and disposed of, at the very worst; there were a wider variety of horrible fates that might befall an elf in Tevinter, even the elven companion of a renowned scholar. It made him ill to even think of it, but Sera hardly needed anyone to tell her how cruel the world could be to elves. "She's... never impressed. By me, or you. By our titles or our magic. Maybe our explosions, but they have to be tremendous. She will not give one solitary fuck that you've done something unprecedented, with this amulet. She just wants to be with you."

He put his hand down on her shoulder, which was—he did not know why he was surprised by this, she was a blacksmith by trade—far more muscular than he'd expected. "You'll work it out. And in the meantime," he said, "we can work _these_ out."

*

_9:44 Dragon_

_Amatus,_

_I did have an excellent reason, though it did not quite go according to plan. Do you think the shelf above my desk is large enough to hold, well. A dragon's entire tooth. I've had a fuck of a time trying to split it in two, out here (why did I think the Inquisitor's brand of travel would agree with me?) and it has occurred to me that you were only pulling my leg when you told me of this particular tradition_ —

*

The working-out, of course, was largely a matter of Dorian nodding along with Dagna's mad theorizing and frantically looking up terms in an introductory rune-crafting text when her back was turned, which it was, often. Sera had come back twenty minutes later to find the two of them with their heads together, which was the most attention Dagna had ever paid Dorian, and which, she had said, was nothing good.

"This might be an accident," Dagna said, before she sent him off, that first night. It was well past midnight. Sera had fallen asleep curled up in an armchair; Dagna was still wide awake. "I might not be able to replicate it."

"I have faith in you," Dorian said, yawning into the crook of his elbow.

Dagna's smile was awkward. She shrugged and went back to work. Of course she didn't need his faith in him. If she'd been the sort to rely on others' praise, she would not have gotten anywhere in her life. With this in mind, it was easy to see why Sera, loud, prickly Sera, was mad for her: it was something to strive toward.

In the morning, he headed down to the Chargers' barracks.

That he would be the one to break first had never been in question. For stubbornness, Bull had no equal. A detachment of Chargers was in the field, doing cleanup duty in the Arbor Wilds; the ten or so left behind at Skyhold were in the throes of cleaning when Dorian walked in.

"I'm looking for Krem," Dorian said, and made sure to wipe the mud off his boots at the doorway. He didn't need them handing him a mop, which they had in the past. They ignored him. Or they tried to. Skinner in particular looked as though she wanted to live up to her name, and while that was her default expression, it was not to be disregarded. "Well, if you won't tell me," he said, "I'm going to assume he's in his office. If you'll excuse me."

That none of them made any move to stop him was a bad sign: they had been told to let him pass. He did not pause for the low sounds of laughter, and threw open the door to find Josephine seated in Bull's chair, marveling at the width of it, her hands dwarfed by the armrests. Krem stood leaning against the desk, trying desperately to look casual. He was taller than Dorian, but he was slouching. (If Dorian had chosen a pair of boots with a bit of extra lift for the occasion, it was only coincidental.) Years of experimentation had proven that Krem, an unflappable shopkeep in a soldier's body, was immune to even Dorian's most menacing loom; and cheerfully, willfully immune to all hint-dropping.

The direct approach, then.

"Ah, my lady," Dorian said, and bowed to Josephine with a degree more politeness than was required by their stations. "I'd heard you were in negotiations. Cremisius—where can I find Bull, if not here?"

"I shouldn't say a thing to you," Krem said.

"You can stop posturing at any time," Dorian replied, and picked a bit of imaginary dust from beneath his nails.

"I believe he's gone up the mountain," Josephine cut in, before the pissing contest could start in earnest. "With the crew of woodcutters. I believe he's... brooding."

Krem looked shocked, betrayed, wounded, and Dorian slid out of the office before either of them could say anything further.

It only took a half-hour to find the clearing where the woodcutters were working, today. He knew, in theory, that Bull liked to help them, and no one doing physical labor would turn down a Tal-Vashoth's help, especially one that swung an axe professionally. Dorian loved his comfort far too much to join Bull in his outings, but, as he rounded the bend in the path, he wondered why he had ever turned up his nose at it.

If Sera were here with him, he would have passed her a handkerchief with which to mop her fevered brow. Fully half of them were women. She might be _with_ a dwarf, but she would never forget her roots. The ties that bound her and Dorian together: a rock-solid, unshakable appreciation of fine muscles. The day was cool in the shade, but nearly all the woodcutters had shed their shirts from the exertion. Bull, who did not wear a shirt if he could help it to begin with, was at the edge of the clearing, pushing and pulling at one half of a massive saw.

When Bull wanted to disappear, he did. Dorian had not so much as laid eyes on him in a week. Now he stood watching, not affected by Bull's form so much as his brow furrowed in concentration, the way he bit his lip when the saw stuttered, how—Dorian was sure—he restrained himself, letting the human on the other end set the pace, as he took on the better part of the work.

Only when the tree fell did Bull look up. Dorian, dressed in rust-red, stood out against the greenery, he knew. Bull grinned at the people who'd come to strip it down to its component parts, then pushed through the crowd to get to Dorian.

"Kadan," he said.

"Amatus."

"Decided you lost your patience? Come to end this?" Bull's face was hard, but his eyes were lost. The dreadnought, all over again. Caught between the loss of two equally precious things, he once more could not make the call.

"I'm not here to convince you of anything," Dorian said. He would _not_ make this decision on Bull's behalf. "Just to tell you—Dagna has made a discovery. Stones—that can send voices. I don't know if she'll be able to repeat it, or how far they'll go, but if the two of us had a pair..."

"Convenient."

"Sometimes," Dorian said, "once in a _very_ rare while, things work out nicely. Even for people like us. We wouldn't be completely cut off from one another, I mean."

Despite his intellectual appreciation earlier, to watch Bull towel the sweat from his muscles really was one of the great joys of Dorian's life. He pulled a rag out now and wiped his face off. "So, what. Speaking stones. Your villa."

"As often as I can get away," Dorian hastened to say. "As often as you can bring the Chargers through Nevarra. I'm a scholar, by vocation—an archivist, by trade. I'll need to take research trips out of Minrathous. And perhaps I can set a limit on how long I'll serve as Mae's right hand man, and find a suitably bloody-minded, but less good looking, replacement."

"You've thought this through," Bull said. He settled down on a stump at the edge of the path. Neither a yes nor a no. "I shouldn't have said any of that shit I did—about Mae. About you."

"You don't have to apologize—"

"Sure I do. I can be just as nasty as you. You're tough; you'll survive. I know that. You wouldn't trust Mae unless she was good. I know that, too." He closed his eye, took Dorian's hand, pressed it to his damp forehead. 

There. All settled. For the moment. And so Dorian took a deep breath. Held it for a count of three. Exhaled, slowly. "Have you ever thought of children?"

"Sure," Bull said. "There's this one that runs around the Great Hall, little elf girl, knee high to a—"

"Children," Dorian said, "with me."

"Oh."

"What is it that Vivienne says? That you're the one who's more than a little bit tamassran? You would make an excellent father, I think."

"Glad I passed the interview," Bull said.

'Because I have—thought of it. Not in so many words. But, ah. Once this is over. I don't know what sort of father I would be, of course." Dorian was fumbling it, he knew. Bull didn't respond. "You'll want to retire, too. There are always... orphans. And places where two men with a child—children, if you like—won't be remarked on. Most places that aren't Tevinter, really. I hear Antiva is lovely, when the monsoons pass. Can you believe I've never been? But it's all Lady Josephine talks about, when she feels a chill in the air—"

"We don't have to settle all this now, big guy," Bull said, and kissed the back of his hand. "I know you want to put a ribbon on this, but we can give it some time. See where we're at in two, three years, and then renegotiate."

Right. It seemed expedient now, but who knew how the next few years would change them. A week of not speaking could not be so easily swept under the rug, either, but Dorian was determined to pretend it could, for as long as this lasted. Happily—for now, if not ever after. Still: "That's not a yes," said Dorian. "I didn't hear a _yes_ in that."

"My ankle's killing me," Bull said. "My hip's been bad all day. Maybe you should help me down the mountain so I can show you how _yes_."

"I wouldn't want to aggravate your condition," Dorian replied, and helping Bull to his feet was more a formality than anything. "Maker forbid I damage anything permanently."

"We'll be careful," said Bull. "Oh, no. Oh, ouch. Shit. Let's get going." 


End file.
